SIR — Your leader on what to do about the rise in road deaths in the developing world was wrong to suggest that “strict vehicle standards are pricey” (“Reinventing the wheel”, January 25th). Vehicle safety is affordable and more achievable than ever before. The UN has a framework of minimum safety standards, including front and side crash tests, that are not costly to implement: the frontal-impact standard can be passed simply by adding an airbag on the driver’s side.

It is now also far less expensive to provide car-body shells that will protect passengers in a crash at the standard test speed of 56kph (35mph). These improvements are achievable at unit costs of less than $100 and will become even cheaper as economies of scale are gained in a globalised industry.

Frankly, it is scandalous that any new cars are being built below these standards, but this is all too common in rapidly motorising developing countries, where the UN regulations are often not applied. Our partner car-assessment programmes in Asia and Latin America continue to find substandard “zero-star” cars in their independent crash tests.

Hopefully by the end of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety all new passenger cars will meet the minimum crash-test standards. That really will help to reinvent the wheel.

David WardSecretary-generalGlobal New Car Assessment ProgrammeLondon

SIR — Kenya piloted a low-cost scheme that placed stickers in the country’s ubiquitous matatus, or minibuses, urging passengers to speak up against reckless driving. Vehicles that were offered the stickers saw a 50% reduction in total accidents compared with a control group. There was an even larger fall of 60% in accidents that cause injuries or fatalities.

This intervention offered extraordinary value for money. Measured by the cost per year of healthy life saved it was cheaper than childhood immunisation. The increase in road deaths requires a broad range of responses; passenger empowerment should definitely be among them.

James HabyarimanaWilliam JackGeorgetown UniversityWashington, DC

* SIR — Unfortunately, road safety has been severely underfunded and off the radar screen of international development, even though road crashes kill more people each year than malaria or tuberculosis. A major cause of the lack of funding was the failure in 2000 to include road injury among the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This omission has made it far harder to mobilise development assistance from donor governments and development agencies, even after the UN declared a Decade of Action for Road Safety in 2011.

Now the UN is starting negotiations on a new framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the MDGs after they run out in 2015. It is vital that road safety is included so that it can be given the priority it clearly deserves but has so far been denied.

Over the past decade the MDGs have proved to be a huge success in improving the life chances of young children. Now we need to invest to make roads safe so that these same children survive the greatest risk they face as they become adults: death in avoidable road crashes.

George Robertson ChairmanCommission for Global Road Safety London

Talking about Cyprus

SIR — The recent letter from the Greek-Cypriot high commissioner left me dismayed (February 1st). There is an obvious disagreement between the two sides in Cyprus about the interpretation of historical events. Turkey did not invade Cyprus, but exercised its rights and obligations under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee to protect the Turkish-Cypriot people and to stop the annexation of the island to Greece. It is disheartening that the Greek-Cypriots are addressing Turkey and putting it under the spotlight rather than trying to resolve disputed issues together with the Turkish-Cypriots.

Had the Greek-Cypriots voted yes for the Annan Plan, as the Turkish-Cypriots did, all the issues, including the opening of Turkish ports and the solution for Maras/Varosha, would have been resolved a decade ago.

But it is never too late. Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriots are committed to a comprehensive settlement. We urge the Greek-Cypriots to concentrate on the negotiations and address the issues there, rather than stipulating preconditions and trying to resolve issues away from the negotiating table.

Oya TuncaliRepresentative of the Turkish Republic of Northern CyprusLondon

A role for private provision

SIR — Bagehot rightly highlighted the “unaffordable rising demand” on Britain’s National Health Service (January 18th). However, the politics of the NHS is preventing a crucial extra step towards affordable health care: independent health-care firms working with the NHS to generate capacity and investment and relieve pressure on the health service.

The latest Care Quality Commission report found that private, not-for-profit and charitable health-care institutions supply high quality, safe, innovative care to patients. The huge challenges that lie ahead for the NHS can only be met through creative thinking and by taking bold decisions.

SIR — You made much of Pete Seeger’s slowness to condemn the Soviet Union (“Bolshie with a banjo”, February 1st). His politics were of the far left, but he was primarily a musician who fought for civil, racial and labour rights, all of which I am sure you would agree fell on the right side of history. He was hardly a cold-war warrior.

I don’t recall your report on the death of Milton Friedman giving any weight to his failure to condemn Pinochet’s brutal regime in Chile (“A heavyweight champ, at five foot two”, November 25th 2006).

Dan LilotMountain View, California

Do more to combat climate change

* SIR – You rightly suggest in your leader that the European Union’s climate-change policy would be considerably more credible if it included a fundamental reform of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (“Worse than useless”, January 25th).

However, the idea that investors will commit billions of pounds in low-carbon infrastructure on the basis of a variable carbon price alone is highly questionable, especially as it will remain very low for the foreseeable future. The effect of delaying sufficient action beyond 2030 would be to require costly early retirement of assets as we scramble to get back on track (or fail to meet our targets).

While a better functioning carbon market is crucial, complementary policies also have their place in attracting the investment needed to decarbonise the EU’s economy and in doing so at the lowest possible cost.

Jason AndersonHead of European climate and energy policyWWFBrussels

Political beauties

SIR — The Economist has a record of lookism, describing Nelson Mandela as “handsome”, praising Enrique Peña Nieto’s “boyish good looks” and Justin Trudeau’s “good looks”. In 2007 you told us that Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for president in France, “has the press drooling” and called her “dazzling” and “radiant”.

Yet you got all tetchy about “beauty-pageant style condescension” directed towards Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican congresswoman, even taking offence that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, described her as “most importantly, a mom” (“More than a mom”, February 1st). However, her official biography emphasises that she has three children and brags that she is the only woman to have given birth three times while serving in Congress.

Being a mother is vital to her personal and political identity. Modern women insist on being able to define themselves. So it is Mr Boehner who is the real feminist for describing her the way she wants to be described.

Phil ChristensonWashington, DC

Where’s the beef?

SIR — “Hail, the Swabian housewife” (February 1st) mentioned Maultaschen, a dish adapted from “Italian ravioli”. There is an interesting legend behind the food. It is said to have been created by monks in an effort to hide meat (inside the pasta parcels) from God’s eye on meatless Fridays and in particular on Good Friday. Hence its colloquial name Herrgottsbescheiberle in Swabian: “little God-cheaters”.

Kilian StraussTübingen, Germany

* SIR – Your splendid article tracing Swabian industriousness (Fleiss) and frugality back to Pietism captured some key characteristics of this tribe. However, what you call an “old saying”, Viel Steine gab’s und wenig Brot (there were many stones and little bread) is actually a line from a poem by Ludwig Uhland, a well-known Swabian poet born in 1787 in Tübingen near Stuttgart. Its subject is a 12th-century crusade of emperor Friedrich I, nicknamed Barbarossa, and a brave Swabian knight fighting a multitude of turks and splitting one in half, the latter described in some detail.

And whether or not it sounds cute, as your article suggests, the Swabian suffix “-le” is functional in nature, exactly as the German “-lein”. It expresses a smaller version of a full-sized article. Example: Brot, bread or loaf thereof; Broetle (many diminutives take an umlaut), literally small bread and usually meaning bread roll, except at Christmas time when it also means cookie. Now those can indeed be cute.

Barbara Kieffer Sacramento, California (émigrée Swabian housewife)

Train of thought

SIR – I was encouraged to read in the executive-focus advertisement section in your January 25th issue that the first skill required for the job of executive director at the European Railway Agency is a “proven track record”.

Philip CurrahVancouver

On another planet

SIR — I see that NASA spent $3m studying Congress (“Dr No retires”, January 25th). Did it find any sign of intelligent life?